A big idea

Towards the end of our second stay in Hawaii Gary Nieland came up with an idea. It was a Sunday afternoon, I know that because we did not practice that day and it was a lazy day. He had been reading the newspaper and while reading the cartoons he saw one called The Crusaders. His middle name is Charles. He thought it would be cool to change the name of the group to Prince Charles and the Crusaders. He even had the uniforms all pictured in his mind. Complete with Swords. Of course this idea was a spin off of Paul Revere and the Raiders which was a big group at the time. Well I was pretty skeptical but it’s never good to be the downer of a group idea. I never really protested the idea and neither did anyone else but my heart really wasn’t in it. We spent the rest of our time in Hawaii preparing. We decided to be booked into a club in Salem Oregon, Gary Nielands hometown, and while appearing there get the uniforms put together, do some recording and try the concert venue. Gary Nieland had bought a house in Salem with a full basement where he built a recording studio. We would play at night, practice and record in the afternoons and weekends. We worked hard at putting an act together that would appeal to teenagers. As things started coming together we were booked on a series of one nighters across Washington and Oregon with a duet from the late fifties and sixties. Dick and Dee Dee. They had had a couple of hits one of which was ” Mountains High”. Our uniforms were a red top kinda like a smock down to mid thigh with white pants and high top boots. Actually looked pretty cool. The swords had a black scabbard and hung from a black belt. Gary Sullivan was really the one that put all this together. He was always the creative one. Away we go out on the road. We had some good times and had some pretty good crowds. One night while on stage Gary Sullivan poked Gary Nieland in the butt with his sword. Nieland or Hoot as we called him moved at the wrong time and it punctured his skin. He had a large blood spot on the rear end of his white pants. We had recorded a couple of records and were working hard to get some air play. One of our records, Mr Love actually caught on a little bit around the Paciffic Northwest. When we completed our tour we were back in the club in Salem and continued recording and trying to get something going with records. To get a hit record is very difficult anytime but it was even more difficult during this time because the British groups were so hot. We recorded an album and were constantly pushing that along with the 45 of Mr Love. After playing the club in Salem for a while we did a few weeks in Portland at a club Called The Longhorn. It was owned by the same guy we worked for in Reno at The Lemon Tree. We continued to live in Salem and drove back and forth to Portland every night. It was about this time we did a concert with Sonny and Cher in Salem at the fairgrounds arena. We were to play their music. We practiced their songs from records and then played them live at the concert. We had occasion to meet and visit them just before the concert in a dressing room. We saw a LOT of Cher that night if you know what I mean. It was fun to meet them. Sonny was really nice, very friendly. Cher, not so much. Because we were still concentrating on recording we stayed in the Salem area for the rest of 1967 and well into 1968. We would switch back and forth between Salem and Portland. I had an old house rented,it had a couple rooms upstairs and Leon rented one of them from me. Gary rented a duplex and for a while there we were all settled down like normal people. Gary has always been into cars. During this time he bought an A model Ford Pickup. He loved it and he and Ricki drove it all over the place. He also built himself a dune buggy which he still owns to this day. I have a good story about that dune buggy I’ll tell you about later. The willamette River runs right through Salem. We noticed a lot of people water skiing on the river and decided we needed a boat, so Gary and I bought a boat and took up water skiing. Every day after practice, weather permitting, we were on the river. Susan and Ricki both got jobs during this time so we were living like regular people. We made lots of friends there and we were off to some lake every Saturday night after work, we would camp out on the lake and spend Sunday water skiing. During this same time I found a Triumph Spitfire sports car for sale for a whopping $900. I bought it and loved it. Drove it all over the place, it was a blast to drive on mountain roads. What a fun period of time. Shannon was getting big enough to be lots of fun to play with. Everything was great. One Sunday some friends invited me to go motorcycle riding in the mountains. It was a blast. Riding the logging roads, we rode all day and I came home exhausted. In the spring of 1968 we were booked into a club in Ketchikan Alaska for a month. Lots of things to tell about Alaska I’ll get to that next time